The World of Ray Kurzweil

When technology inventor Ray Kurzweil theorizes about the future, he predicts an astounding world filled with telephones that perform language translation and computers that can "think" better than the human brain. Take a peek at Kurzweil's plausible vision of the future — and find out what this means to the average geek.

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Here's how it is in Ray Kurzweil's world: In the very near future,
personal computers as we know them will be replaced by increasingly smaller,
perhaps microscopic, computing devices dedicated to specific tasks and
activities. Within that same time frame, the telephone will become a device for
real-time language translation.

Within 50 years, a student will no longer go to school to learn calculus; he
or she will acquire the knowledge by digesting a pill that contains new genetic
programming and nanotechnology that "puts" calculus into the
student's consciousness while enhancing the computational power of his
brain. And within a hundred years, those who reach the age of 100 (and there
will be many of them) will be confronted with a significant question: Do I
download my consciousness into an artificial, life-sustaining device, or do I
move on and die?

Such are the ponderings of Kurzweil's mindbut is he to be
believed?

Today's Pioneer

Kurzweil is one of the preeminent thinkers and inventors of our time. His
pioneering work has made it possible for computers to recognize text and turn it
into speech. For his achievements, Kurzweil has been inducted into the
National Inventors Hall of Fame
and has been awarded the
National Medal of Technology,
the highest honor the United States bestows in the field of technology.

Kurzweil has written two noteworthy books about technology in our world:
The Age of Intelligent Machines and the The Age of Spiritual
Machines. He has also developed nine businesses in fields such as optical
character recognition (OCR), music synthesis, speech recognition, reading
technology, virtual reality, financial investment, medical simulation, and
cybernetic art. (See
http://www.kurzweiltech.com/aboutray.html
for details.)

That he has, by his own reports, eliminated Type 2 diabetes from his body by
taking 250 nutritional supplements a day only adds credibility to the daring of
his "outside-the-box" thinking.

Kurzweil is no futuristic charlatan. He is the real deal, doing real thinking
about the world of now and the world of tomorrow. His assertions about things to
come are not to be taken likely: The real-time phone translator that I describe
above is one of his new inventions; he is still working out the kinks.